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City finance commissioner moves to Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty

At the end of September, David Frankel is slated to replace William Rapfogel, 58, who last week was fired from the nonprofit organization he headed for 21 years amid allegations of financial shenanigans. The Met Council did not immediately reveal what Frankels salary would be. Rapfogel, who made $417,000 a year, was canned after the Mets board found financial irregularities under his tenure. Rapfogel is believed to have purchased insurance policies at inflated prices using the Met Councils money and then received kickbacks from the agent, Century Coverage Corp., a source said. His wife, Judy, who serves as Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silvers chief of staff, has her own ties to the insurance company.

Fate of Polish finance minister not known until November: deputy PM

“In my opinion, whether Minister Rostowski will remain in the government will be decided in November at the earliest,” Piechocinski told public radio. State television broadcaster TVP quoted a government spokesman as saying reports of Rostowski’s departure were mere speculation and no decisions about individual ministers would be made until the middle of the government’s four-year term, which started in November 2011. Rostowski has been Poland’s finance minister for six years, making him the country’s longest-standing finance chief since the end of Communism in 1989. He helped Poland keep its two-decade growth streak despite the global financial crisis.

Development Banks and Post-Crisis Blues in Investment Finance

He has helped Poland become the European Union’s sole member to avoid recession following the financial crisis. Markets have praised Rostowski, born in Britain to Polish exile parents, for the fiscal discipline he has enforced. But the slowdown, which saw the economy flirt with contraction at the turn of the year, proved deeper than Rostowski had anticipated, forcing him in July to raise the deficit and cut public spending. Tusk’s ruling Civic Platform party has been losing support because of the economic downturn.

As I have argued elsewhere — currency war and peace — the mere abundance of international liquidity of latter years has not been conducive to an equivalent creation of new productive assets in developing countries. As the retrenchment of cross-border bank long-term lending does not seem to be reversible in the near future, other vehicles will need to assume a bigger role: (…) institutional investors with long-term liabilities — such as pension funds, insurers, and sovereign wealth funds — may be called upon to assume a greater role in funding long-term assets. (…) local-currency bond markets — and, more generally, domestic capital markets — in emerging economies must be explored further, in order to lengthen the tenure of financial flows. What Development Banks Bring to the Table In such a context, it is no surprise that the creation/expansion of national and multilateral development banks has been getting so much attention.